GERMAN DETENTE: SOVIET QUANDARY?

By JAMES M. MARKHAM

Published: September 6, 1984

BONN, Sept. 5—
The scuttling Monday of a planned visit to West Germany by Erich Honecker, the East German Communist leader, capped an extraordinary confrontation between the Soviet Union and its weightiest Warsaw Pact ally. But in the view of officials and Western diplomats here, the strenuous Soviet arm-twisting required to get Mr. Honecker to call off the trip suggests that Moscow will have difficulty halting the development of detente between the two Germanys. East Germany's internal stability and prosperity are seen as bound up in its lucrative links to the Federal Republic.

The clash between Moscow and East Berlin pivoted on radically differing approaches to East-West relations in the wake of the deployment of American medium-range missiles in Western Europe last winter.

'Limiting the Damage'

While the Russians insisted that the deployment had created a new international context - one that demanded a closing of ranks within the Warsaw Pact - Mr. Honecker quickly emerged as an exponent of ''limiting the damage'' to East-West ties and coined the phrase ''community of responsibility'' to describe the special relationship between East and West Germany.

Mr. Honecker was publicly lukewarm to the Soviet Union's so-called countermeasures - the stationing of new tactical nuclear weapons in East Germany and Czechoslovakia - and sounded hopeful about resuming Soviet-American arms talks as Moscow was angrily growling about what it sees as the intransigence of the Reagan Administration.

''This was not just a question of tactical nuances,'' said Christian Meier, a West German academic authority on Eastern Europe. ''Here there was a fundamental conflict of strategy - and especially over West Germany.'' Alignment With Hungary

As the ideological discussion heated up within the Warsaw Pact, East Germany, once regarded as a hard-line Stalinist state, aligned itself increasingly with independent-minded Hungary in arguing that small European nations could play a special role in securing peace and detente. ''This joining of forces with Hungary must be a scare for the Russians,'' commented Vladimir Kusin, an analyst at Radio Free Europe in Munich.

The eager pursuit of detente by Bonn and East Berlin made a mockery of earlier Soviet threats to Chancellor Helmut Kohl that ''a pallisade of rockets'' would sunder the two Germanys if his Government accepted the American missiles. For Moscow, the Honecker visit, which was to begin Sept. 26, would have demonstrated that Mr. Kohl had paid no political price for championing deployment.

Bluntly reminding the East Germans who was in charge of their destiny, the Soviet Union in May announced the emplacement of ''additional'' nuclear weapons on German soil and this summer pointedly staged military maneuvers without the participation of East German units.

There is little doubt here that Soviet pressure - including a propaganda campaign against a ''revanchist'' West Germany purportedly bent on destroying East German Communism - finally brought Mr. Honecker to heel, forcing him to pass up a historic moment as the first East German Communist leader to visit the Federal Republic. 'Not a Major Setback'

But both Bonn and East Berlin have swiftly signaled a wish to pursue their special relationship.

The East Germans insist they have postponed, not canceled, the visit, and Mr. Honecker was today reported to have told a Japanese parliamentary delegation that he was still keen to make a well-prepared trip to West Germany that promised results. He told the Japanese that friendly ties to the West served peace.

As if to further underscore this point, Mr. Honecker today received a West German environmentalist group in East Berlin. For his part, Chancellor Kohl reiterated that the East German was ''welcome.''

A broad consensus among diplomats and officials here is that the thaw between East and West Germany will survive the postponement. ''They will continue this damage-limiting policy on both sides,'' predicted one Western European envoy, ''and try to maintain contacts at a lesser level - and find another moment to pick this up again. It is not a major setback.''

The forces pulling East and West Germany ever closer are not so much sentimental as economic. Over the years, West German subsidies, private investment, bank loans and outright gifts from individuals and church groups have underpinned East Germany's singular prosperity within the Warsaw Pact. The saturation of East Germany by West German television furthers a common identity. 'Could Boomerang for Soviets'

Moreover, a diplomatic loophole in the Treaty of Rome makes East Germany a de facto member of the European Community, allowing it to export to West Germany and beyond without paying import duties. East Berlin's export-minded economic planners are determined to expand such contacts with the West - and not to be pushed back into a stagnant isolation within the Warsaw Pact.

One senior Bonn official predicted today that the veto of the Honecker trip ''could boomerang for the Soviets.''

''It will create resentments and discomfort in East Germany,'' the official said, noting that East German opinion was already smoldering over the Soviet ban on participation in the Los Angeles Olympics.

The episode has also been a quiet humiliation for Mr. Honecker, 72 years old, who will doubtless watch with some bitterness as the Communist leaders of Bulgaria and Rumania visit Bonn in the next few weeks. Although he and his East German comrades have forged the soundest economy in the Warsaw Pact and its second-best military machine, and although he presides over Eastern Europe's most stable political system, Mr. Honecker will probably have to content himself with a visit to Finland in October.